A proud despot

The Prime Minister is pleased with the media, what, with its cooperation and free love with our Government.

Though, that’s pretty much what you get when you effectively own and control the media.

Goals?

Sometime before moving to Singapore, I decided that I looked alright and the cost-benefit was too steep to lose weight and then look gorgeous. Thus, those fat jokes? Heh, funny, not cutting. But then moving to Singapore and getting used to it change my perspective somewhat.

You see, food in Singapore? Like cardboard. So when lacking good food, the finer things in life becomes far more important. Like sanity.

So when you struggle to finish a term paper because of extreme lethargy, that’s a drop in sanity levels. Feeling exhausted just halfway through a day? Another drop *plop*. I’m in a state of unhealthy-fulness, and it’s messing around with my daily life.

Yes, I can give up unhealthy food – something I can’t possibly do right now in Malaysia (remember, sanity?). Which brings me to my other sanity-preserving task plan – stop commuting between Malaysia and Singapore. Next term onwards, I’m coming back once a term, and staying put. If I return to Singapore, I stay put, even if there is four to five days gap of nothing-to-do.

So the combined action of lack of good food, the unwillingness to travel for good food and the need to get healthy to preserve sanity, I decided to, bleh, go on a fitness program. Which is a stark departure from previous attempts, which involves me trying to be a underwear model, failing just after realizing I much rather be enjoying roti kaya and teh o ais (there’s a bunch of research papers dealing with utility and instant gratification – look it up).

Underwear model, at this point, is an additional benefit – something extra that would be nice. A thoughtful free gift. Keeping the sniffles away for most of the time? The goal. So while underwear model body would take years to come, the benefit of good health is within easy grasps – solving the whole instant gratification puzzle.

And if you have already read this far, I need *your* help: suggest a fitness program. Adding supplements and changing to brown rice isn’t much – would not solve things like sloth-like stamina, slightly high blood pressure and pre-diabetes.

Everyone’s an expert

Apparently, Jesus never said he is God. Zainol decides to cherry picks a bunch of verses and foist upon it his own interpretation, to show Jesus was Allah’s lovely messenger boy to the Hebrews and no one else. Seems to be a tragic problem amongst fundamentalist Muslims – taking well-selected portions of the Bible and giving it a literal meaning.

Like MENJ – thinking the Bible actually calls Him a literal Lamb.

But apparently, according to Zainol, because Jesus said, “I was not sent but to the sheep that are lost of the house of Israel… It is not good to take the bread of the children, and to cast it to the dogs.” (Mat 15:24, 26), therefore it is proven Jesus was messenger, messenger to the Jews.

A bit of the problem there. In the passage, a Canaanite woman came to Jesus to ask healing for her demon-possessed daughter. How did the passage end? Jesus healed the woman’s daughter. If Jesus was truly Allah’s messenger to the Jews, why did he heal the Canaanite girl?

What’s the point of the passage? More after the break.

Updated: Added a link above, the rest after the break:

Productive holidays

Rarely, heck ever, do I ever have a productive holiday. This summer, I went for an international competition (where I lost parts of my sanity, phone and a huge-ass pencil case with everything from pendrives to erasers), joined this video project, and learn an assortment of research stuff like proof reading and shifting through interview transcripts.

And I’m just a little over halfway done.

Anyway, back to the video, been procrastinating this for some time. This is the one I was heavily involved (writer, DOP, editor):

Essentially, the dude was focusing his life on something very temporal and out of his control. Something like how we focus on careers, families, studies – and all it needs is a bratty little sister to destroy it all.

This one was tiring:

Something about addiction. And how we can be addicted to anything (whether the wise psychologists think it is clinical addiction or not).

And this is the most morbid:

The shoes represent life. All the long, the broad had new shoes, but as she said, the current ones were “familiar, comfortable”. It takes some time to break into new shoes, but the initial discomfort is worth it.

Notice how they are all connected to one part of the body? The first- hands, the second – mouth, and the last – feet. It’s like a Sarawakian hand-foot-mouth disease. Enjoy.

Scottish independence isn’t that bad

The new Scottish first minister calls for the corporate tax to be slashed to a very Irish 12.5%. Lower corporate tax means a few things – companies don’t try to avoid it by hiring expensive accountants or even moving, and companies have more money to either distribute (most shareholders aren’t rich) or reinvest (creating more jobs, et cetera).

And lower tax does not necessarily mean less government revenue – more productive companies simply makes more money. More money to invest certainly helps in that area.

Malaysia on the other hand has one of the highest corporate tax rate in the region – 28%. That, and various other costs to business like the Bumiputra policy, heavy-handed regulation like price controls, is keeping Malaysia behind as countries like Singapore and Vietnam surges ahead.

“Metaphor”

MENJ misses the whole point about Jesus being the Lamb (try reading Exodus 12, it’s a metaphor). When would his next article on Jesus being, I don’t know, the Word (John 1:1), comes out? Oh, I can imagine it – he mocking Christians for worshiping words.

He’s funny when he’s stupid.

Sorry, yah?

Just came back to KL on Friday night. Yeah, I know, crazy. I got to stop the Singapore-KL commute. Though, when I graduate and stuff, it probably would get worse – hopefully, the Singapore-KL bullet train would be about done by then.

But when I start earning Singapore dollars, I’ll probably upgrade from the whole rushing to JB bit, and catching a S$10++ bus there. Aeroline, maybe?

When at the Causeway

Try your hardest best not to queue up behind the “SINGAPORE PASSPORT, PRs, APEX TRAVEL CARD” when you hold neither a Singaporean passport, a Permanent Resident re-entry card, or any other immigrant cards for that matter.

Democracy at work

Hamas is just a political party:

Yesterday the only Palestinian Authority security men still visible at Erez were a couple of hundred unarmed Fatah fugitives desperate to flee into Israel. They had camped for four days at the border gate. Behind them, Bedouin looters were dismantling the tunnel, stripping roofing and digging up pipes and wiring.

“If we went back to Gaza, Hamas would execute us,” said a 30-year-old man who gave his name as Abu Faras. “We don’t have the same ideology as them and they are shooting everybody who has different beliefs.”

Abu Faras lay on the floor of the tunnel among a group of injured men, his leg crudely bandaged to staunch bleeding from a gunshot wound.

Lets give them the West Bank as well.

Ohh, scary…

A bunch of Islamist bloggers are making a coalition. Rumour has it, t-shirts to follow. Can’t wait.